Council of Dumbledores
by Transcendent Equinox
Summary: Harry gets summoned by a trans-dimensional police force, known as the Council of Dumbledores. You thought one Dumbledore was hard to deal with; how about a thousand? No pairings.
1. Chapter 1

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* * *

 **Council of Dumbledores**

* * *

Harry Potter got off the Hogwarts Express with naught more than a forlorn look back. He never liked returning to the regular, boring world during the summer. But all good things had to come to an end, didn't they? With that sobering thought, he turned away from the symbol of his one true home, before facing his expectant friends.

He got a quick friendly hug from Hermione, who excitedly whispered, "Don't you dare forget to do your homework early, like you promised!" Harry hugged her back, and only shook his head in good fun at how determined she was to make him work harder.

"How could I, with you as my best friend?" he rhetorically whispered back, before sincerely adding, "But seriously though, thanks for everything this past year." Unsaid between them was the illegal use of a time-turner right at the end when it was needed. "I'm gonna actually try hard in school from now on." And he really was.

After they broke their hug, Hermione ran off to her parents, who were mingling with Arthur and Molly Weasley a little ways off. Next he got a parting, firm handshake from Ron, who whispered, "You'll let us know if the muggles mistreat you, won't you Harry?"

"If I didn't, then the summer wouldn't really be complete, would it?" replied Harry jokingly, though it felt kind of hollow after the words left him. "Thanks for looking out for me though, Ron." With that, the clapped each other on the back and parted ways.

"Have a good holiday, Harry!" called out Mrs. Weasley, followed by a similar chorus from every person in the throng. It was super endearing.

"And don't forget to write!" Hermione shouted out, right before the train whistle blew and drowned out everything else.

After it stopped, Harry shouted back, "Of course, I'll write you lot!" somewhat exasperated at his paranoid friends. "Do you think I'll just forget you guys as soon as summer holidays start?"

And with that parting shot, he turned away from almost all of his loved ones, facing the walkway back to the muggle world. With a deep sigh, he stepped back through the portal, back to the normal side of Kings Cross Station, back to the loathing presence of the Dursley family-

* * *

WHOWHATWHENWHEREWHY

* * *

Except something was wrong. "What's happening?!" he asked — or at least tried to; the air twisted away from him, stolen from his lungs as he warped and coiled past lights and darkness, an iridescent miasmic kaleidoscope of spinning hues and tints and shades to colors he had no names for.

This continued for probably ten, torturously disorienting and nauseating minutes until he slammed into a cold stone floor. The instant, transition-less shift from absolute motion to absolute stop was almost worse than the journey, and Harry felt like he was about to empty his stomach, intestines, liver, kidneys, and lungs all in one moment.

Or perhaps his insides were made of Jell-O. Would that explain the insufferable itchiness of his internal organs? At the moment, he wasn't too sure.

Several voices gasped, and some words were spoken, but they were too muffled for him to even try understanding what they were saying. His vision was even more blurry than if he were underwater without his glasses, and his nose smelled hospital-smell (for lack of a better word).

For a few moments, his existence stayed just as miserable, before he gradually regained control and composure over his body and mind.

He sat up, blinking at the room around him. Although, room isn't a good way to describe the place he was in. Amphitheatre would be a much more apt description, actually.

He was in the center of a pentagram, with a candle on each point of the star. In his immediate surroundings, there were roughly a dozen cloaked people staring at him with something he could not begin to understand glinting in their barely visible, though oddly congruent, eyes. And then, spreading outward and upward, looking down on him from all sides, were rows upon rows of cloaked figures with the same glowing eyes.

"Where the fuck am I?" he fearfully asked, before adding, "How the fuck did I get here? Who the fuck are you people? What the fuck is going on?" Then he looked down at himself, and screamed, "Why the bloody hell am I fucking naked?!"

The people standing around him alternated between studying him and exchanging glances amongst themselves. They started whispering, their words muffled and distorted so he couldn't make out more than snippets of conversation if he strained his ears.

"Inter or Transdimensional-"  
"Meta through Pataphysical-"  
"Infinite and Transfinite-"

"HEY!" he screamed, causing them all to stop talking. One of them waved their hand, and the buzzing in his ears faded away. "WHAT… WHO… WHERE?!"

"We can hear you just fine," said a hauntingly familiar voice. The figure pulled their hood back, to reveal brilliant white hair, gleaming blue eyes under half-moon spectacles, and a crooked nose that looked like it'd been broken twice.

"Dumbledore?" Harry questioned, unsure of what was going on.

"Yes?" all the people around him asked, in identical voices. All the hoods were pulled back, showing twelve different Albus Dumbledores standing in a circle around him. Then everybody, of the hundreds or even thousands of people looking down on him, removed their hoods to reveal even more Albus Dumbledores.

Taking all this in, Harry's eyes tolled into the back of his head and he promptly fainted.

They all sighed at the same time, before one said aloud, "We'll have to introduce ourselves after he regains consciousness, it seems."  
"We don't have time to spare for this!" said one of the perpetually angry Dumbledores in the first row.  
"Arrrg, da fate o' da omniverse rests on that tharr boy!" shouted a different one, this one wearing a full-blown pirate costume.  
"Then let's not waste time with meta-discourse," said yet another, this one with the milky grey eyes of a blind man, wearing a white lab coat.

" _Enervate_!" incanted a nearby Dumbledore who was slightly more pragmatic than the rest, casting the spell that forcibly woke Harry back up.  
"It was for the Greater Good," said one Dumbledore with a symbol of the Deathly Hallows on his robes.

"Wha-"

"All of your questions will be answered," said a rosy cheeked Dumbledore in a kindly manner.  
"Affirmative," added a robot that had a metallic beard, blinking blue lights, and a pointy head instead of a hat.

One Dumbledore floated down to the floor, blue runes flowing over his skin as he approached Harry. "Harry James Potter, of Earth A-01. Thou stands before thy Council of Dumbledores. A great task lays ahead of thee, one that we shalt prepare thou for."

"Council... of Dumbledores?" Harry asked.

"We are all Albus Dumbledore," answered a grey-skinned Dumbledore with shrewd red eyes, and needle-like fangs.  
"There is a transfinite, in-quantifiable number of parallel universes," said another, this one with a nasty burn covering his face.  
"We hail from a small fraction of these realities," said one whose head was inside a fishbowl full of water. He had gills.  
"Police the omniverse, we do," said a diminuitive Dumbledore with green skin, pointy ears, and a walking stick.

"Oh," was really all Harry could come up with to say after that explanation. "What, uh, what am I supposed to do?"

"You will train under us twelve," said one of the Dumbledore that were on the main floor with him. "We are the most powerful and knowledgeable magicians on the Council."

And so, Harry summer just became a whole lot more hectic.


	2. Chapter 2

**Prologue Part 2:**

* * *

"I'm sorry, could you repeat that?" asked Harry, digging earwax out from his ears.

"You are not the original version of you," said a Dumbledore that looked exactly like Mickey Mouse, if Mickey Mouse were on steroids.  
"None of us are the original Dumbledore either." This speaker was wearing samurai armor.  
"We are merely derivatives, offshoots of the Earth A-00," added another, this time wearing a Star Trek captain's uniform.  
" _That_ world is the canonical world," spoke one of the twelve Dumbledores immediately around him.  
"It keeps shifting ever so slightly based on its author's tweets..."

Potter decided to ignore that last statement; he didn't want to go down the rabbit hole of trying to decipher what that meant, let alone whatever it implied about his reality. "So... none of us are real?" Harry summed up.

"Matter what's real and what's fake, does it?" queried Yoda Dumbledore.

"I think it bloody well does!" exclaimed the teenager.

"Morpheus Dumbledore!" shouted a Dumbledore whose skin was scale-y like a white snake. His hair was silky and black, for some reason.

"On it," called out a voice from the distant reaches of the amphitheater.

Potter whirled around to look at the new speaker, and saw a version of Dumbledore that made him almost want to smile: wearing a dark business suit, a black leather trench coat, and large circular sunglasses, was a dark-skinned and very serious-looking Dumbledore. The man's approach was slow and deliberate, his footsteps echoing around the silent chamber.

About five minutes later, when Morpheus-Dumbledore finally arrived on the main floor next to the young wizard, he held out both of his hands. "Harry, you have a choice. You can take this blue pill, and go back to your quiet, normal life in the wizarding world of your... world... You will forget that any of this ever happened, or perhaps think it was a particularly odd dream. Or, you can take the red pill, and leave your old life behind for a higher purpose."

Potter looked at the two pills, silently contemplating just what he wanted to do. "What would happen if I just let the evil version of myself just kinda do his thing?"

"Well, idiot, he's in the process of killing all other retard versions of himself and absorbing their stupid powers, so... you'd eventually get murdered right after you reached the pinnacle of your moronic ability, I think," said an angry Dumbledore whose skin was made of ice.

"And if that happens, if two versions of the same entity interact with each other in the same universe, the paradox could rip the universe apart... Although, that really depends more on the nature of the specific universe in question, rather than anything else," said the Mad Scientist Dumbledore.

"What about my universe?"

"Earth A-01 is relatively stable, though still mutable enough for magic to exist. So... I'd say you've got a 50/50 shot of the final confrontation being just you dying, or the entire universe going with you," said the Burnt Dumbledore.

"... There's not a single happy outcome is there?" Potter asked rhetorically. After a brief pause, he sighed in surrender and wondered aloud, "Would I ever get to return to my home-world?"

"OAO!3AD'RG? 2RJ-GSDJJ.()()VSID5XICIO:*sdfoWDF," said the monstrosity that was Cronenberg Dumbledore

"... What."

"He said, 'sure,'" said a female Dumbledore who was wearing military fatigues, and casually stroking the rocket launcher strapped to her back.  
"What they meant to say," said the Deathly Hallows Dumbledore, "Was that we won't keep you here. But, it would be wise for you to complete your training... For the Greater Good."

All the other Dumbledores groaned at that phrase.

"Why did you never leave our edgy teenage years behind?" asked a cowboy version of Dumbledore.

"My Ariana never died, and Gellert got me pregnant when I was 17, but we had to get it aborted-"

"apDPdkFKGJsadmm375# jdj$ 3456$%asdkjfDGODFKCJM!" screeched Cronenberg Dumbledore, cutting off the traumatizing flow of events from the teenager's unwilling ears.

"Oh... kay... I didn't realize men could get pregnant..."

"Some universes allow M-Preg through magical shenanigans, while others don't."  
"The vast majority of OUR universes don't allow it on a physical level, or it's uncommon."  
"In mine, it's natural!" exclaimed the Fishie Dumbledore.

"... Um..."

"I'm sorry Potter," said one of the less insane Dumbledore's (though he's still undoubtedly crazy). "This isn't how I planned to introduce you to the Council; though, I suppose it's good that you'll know what you're signing up for before you dive headfirst in... You should choose your pill now."

Then Harry turned back to Morpheus Dumbledore, who apparently had been standing there with his hands outstretched for the past few minutes, silently waiting for the young wizard to choose. A bead of sweat worked down the back of his head, before he grabbed the red pill and swallowed it.

"Look Harry, my boy," said one of the Big Twelve, "-we should get you started on your training as soon as possible. The earlier you start, the stronger you'll be when Harry ZZZ-999 comes looking for you."

"ZZZ-999? How many universes are you guys aware of?" asked Potter.

"Slightly less than eighteen million, though there are only a few hundred Dumbledores that are both good and competent. Luckily, the evil and manipulative Dumbledores tend to not get along well with others, so they aren't likely to band together within the next few millennia," said a Dumbledore that had a Green Lantern ring.

 **(From this point on, the various Dumbledores will be named based on their inspirations or descriptions.)**

The teenager whistled at the figure. The Council gave the young wizard a few seconds to let that sink in, before one spoke up, "We are now going to begin Harry's basic training. Only permitted Dumbledores may be in the amphitheater now!" Harry waved goodbye to Pirate, Female Soldier, Robot, Mickey Mouse, Yoda, Samurai, Star Trek, Orochimaru, Green Lantern, Merman-Thing, Mad Scientist, Cowboy, and even Cronenberg.

Finally, it was just the young wizard and the Big Twelve. "So, let's begin," they all said, in unison.

* * *

 **A/N: What should the powers of the 12 Dumbledores be? I'm thinking beyond god-tier. Things like Omnikinesis, Omnipathy, Absolute Illusion, Absolute Existence, Power Resistance/Immunity/Negation, Meta Summoning/Teleportation, Boundless Inner World, Apocalyptic Force manipulation, Sub-Space manipulation, Existential Plane manipulation, Boundary/Difference manipulation, etc. Ideas?**


End file.
